The Siloed Effect: Connecting the Health Equity Dots in the Oral Health Industry OP-ED BY DWINITA MOSBY TYLER, PH.D.
EQUALITY
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With today’s illuminated focus on health, we can more clearly see the impact of what years of siloed examination has done to the lived experiences of the American public. “Health” has, over time, become a synonym for disease management and has left out the importance of preventative health, mental health and oral health. The realities of our institutional designs and strategies to provide sick care versus healthcare is also a culprit in this matter. In many ways, we have built an infrastructure for care that subliminally tells the patient they should enter the doors only when they are in crisis. This “wait until you’re in crisis before you come” belief is seen more prominently in communities of color.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dr. Dwinita Mosby Tyler is the Chief Catalyst and Founder of The Equity Project, LLC. She is an accredited consultant by the Georgetown University National Center for Cultural Competence and earned a Cornell University Diversity & Inclusion Certification. Dr. Mosby Tyler is nationally recognized for her equity work with non-profit, government and corporate organizations. She has a Ph.D. in organizational leadership, a master's degree in management and a bachelor's degree in education.
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There are two lanes. Sick care is one of those lanes and is about taking care of those who are already suffering from some condition or other. Healthcare, on the other hand, is a lane designed to ensure people work towards being healthy and take the right steps not to fall sick or develop a disease. Our ability to understand the drivers to each lane is key. Our ability to discuss the totality of healthcare in a non-siloed manner is also key. We should be talking about the health and wellness of the whole body; each component part being examined in relationship to the other. We should also break our pattern of overlooking oral
EQUITY
health as a critical component of overall health. We must understand the impact of oral health on the rest of the body. In the work of health equity, we must address two major issues: (1) Cognitive Fixedness – a mindset in which we consciously or unconsciously assume there is only one way to interpret or approach a situation and (2) Structural Fixedness – our tendency to create a strong association with a structure, resulting in difficulty considering an alternative structure or order. These fixedness factors are a part of our inability to connect all the moving parts to establish the totality of good health. This fixedness factor or lack of understanding of alternative ways to interpret health issues can be solved by looking, more proactively, at systemic barriers to health. Oral health should always be explained in a way that shows the impact on the rest of the body. Oral health equity should be an easily understood explanation of how fair and just the procedures of dental care really are; making patients feel valued throughout the process. Oral health equity means we must understand the barriers and challenges (this is how we disrupt our fixedness) to achieving oral health. The NIHCM Foundation (nihcm.org) articulates barriers as:
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